1 GM: Good News! The new minis are painted, so we can stop using the temporary ones. Paris...2 Paris: {hoists large gun} Now that's more like it! Let's kick some butt!3 GM: Iki Piki...4 Iki Piki: {now a blue alien} I'm an alien?!4 Paris: You didn't know?

2011-11-30 Rerun commentary: Actually, looking at the rerun commentary I wrote for the previous strip, this comic is amusing all over again in a different light.

In reality the player playing Paris didn't know she was female!

Iki Piki, whose name we learn here for the first time, is loosely based on the alien race named the Pachekki, from GURPS Aliens. In our real life game, Iki Piki actually is a Pachekki, straight out of the book, but in the comic some of the more bizarre alien physiology stuff is glossed over for the sake of simplicity. Most notably, Pachekki as written shift sexual reproductive roles between male and female every few days, and this shift is accompanied by a marked shift in personality, with the female side being hyperactive and male side being lazy. I would have included it, but it was just too complicated to try to explain within a comic, so it got quietly dropped.